Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Spring Fling: Day 21, or Kristin's Birthday!

Welcome to the Spring Fling! Don't forget, I'd love everyone to join in! By the way, you don't have to do the Spring Fling this month. Feel free to start it whenever you'd like! To learn more, read this. I now have a button for anyone who's joining me for the Spring Fling (it's located on the sidebar). So here's the plan:

So...today is my *birthday*! And it has been an absolutely lovely day so far. This was a short school day, and I only had one class. My mom made French toast for breakfast this morning. =) I've been blessed with all sorts of amazing gifts! Like:

Seriously. Six new books! Our town has this discount store that has an amazing book section. I'm talking about relatively new releases. They most recently got a ton of Christian books in: books that would sell for $12-$15 in a bookstore. They're $2.99 and $3.99 here. I picked out all of these books for my birthday from that store!

I also got the last Andy Griffith season I needed to complete my set, an Andy Griffith trivia board game, "The African Queen" on DVD (which I'm so excited about watching again), "Snow White" on DVD, the set of the first three "Loves Comes Softly" movies (I guess you could say I collect books and movies), and some other equally awesome stuff. I am so blessed. And not just because all of the amazing gifts I got. Because of the wonderfully quirky family that God picked for me to be born into 19 years ago. =)

So today I'm supposed to post a recipe, which is sort of ironic for my birthday. Because my cooking and baking skills are sorely lacking. Something I really need to work on. If you haven't noticed, I never post recipes. Anyway, every once and a while, I'll break bad and bake something. I have this Elvis recipe book called "Are You Hungry Tonight?" (I am dead serious) that has an amazing frosted brownie recipe. It also includes a recipe for a massive wedding cake just like Elvis and Priscilla's, but let's not get distracted here. I've made this recipe several times before and it's awesome.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 7 x 11-inch baking pan with butter. In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt and blend well. Stir in the nuts. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overbake. Let the brownies cool in the pan. Frost them, then cut into 12 bars.